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Business talk

Hallo!

Thanks for all of your comments yesterday, I got a lot of great insight! Makes total sense that I keep my name for my business. I am going to do that. Maybe start thinking about a logo, or some identifying style for my website. Having a jewelry business is easy but really, getting down the nitty gritty of keeping things fresh and exciting, and branding oneself, is the hardest part of the whole thing. I feel like I am always constantly thinking about how to do it right, and it really takes a lot of time and effort to make the right choices for a successful business. Making jewelry is the easy part!

I'm thinking that I may try to consolidate a little. Combine the jewelry accord shop and the tin snippets together on Etsy. Ditch the destash shop. And then keep a few things on Etsy for traffic but move the majority of my jewelry to a separate website. So here's the hard part. What do I call the combined supply shop. I talked to Lori Anderson for a while last night and she suggested I keep my name as part of the title of that new shop. She also offered up a lot of great advice from tips on buying domain names and forwarding these to one particular place, be it my shop or website or whatever. She also had some great advice for my blog, about link colors- something I didn't even think about before. And also suggested I put some info on the bottom of each post so that if someone lands on a specific post, they won't have to search everywhere for shop links. So I'll be trying my new signature on this post. Let me know what you think!

Transferring the blog to the new site is a scary concept for me after I have been at Blogger for several years now. The only issue I have with embedding the blog from blogger to the new site is that people can't leave comments! That's a bummer. I wouldn't want people to have to click link, go to blogger, to leave a comment there. It's too much work. So at this point, I'm thinking the blog will have to stay put. Lori was also telling me that I could redirect my blog address to an easier to remember URL like Loreleisblog.com so I'll be looking into doing that. I'm sure Lorelei1141 isn't always the easiest to remember when searching for my blog online.

So now the big decision is stay at shopify? or try something new like Indiemade.com. I also have LoreleiEurtoJewelry.com which is my hosted website using Squarespace. I have no idea if people ever land there. Is it necessary to keep that? I like it enough, it's customizable to a point but not really how I want it to look. What do I want my website to look like? Well, in all honesty, I want it to look like Anthropologie. Can I make it look like that, give it that vintage floral feel? Not by myself, no.

Still lots of info to chew on. Above, you'll see the new spool rack I bought yesterday. I LOVE IT! I went there looking for some way to display my linen cord spools to keep them organized. Before I had all the spools thrown in a plastic drawer from a 3 drawer system I have in the office. Had to take the drawer out to bring it up to the studio where I have a closed door because the cats go batshit over linen cording and I couldn't cut in in the office anymore - no doors to keep the shitbirds out.
Organizing colorful cording like this makes me happeh happeh happeh. Oh yea.

Comments

I like the idea of combining the shops and keeping your name attached..Lori has some great ideas about branding ..the color linking is interesting too..I like being able to scroll down on Blogspot to view my favorites or spot something interesting to read ..I've found that i don't regularly search out blogs on wordpress or other locations that are not connected to blogspot ...even though i love the people...it's out of sight out of mind.looking forward to seeing what your finally decide on the shops.

I reread some of the comments from yesterday because they were so very insightful. You opened up a great dialog. I think that Lori is right on the money. Great ideas! I have been wanting a fresh start for some time. I just realize that I cannot do it myself and hope there is a magic graphics fairy that will appear and wave her wand to make it happen. Not likely. The blog is the hardest thing. I have my domain name directly linked to my Indiemade account, so I am sure you could do that with your domain name. I also own another domain name that redirects to my website, www.treasuresfoundjewelry.com. I am sure that whatever you decide you can have things redirect to your new domain. I like your new signature. Your name is really pretty in that font. The text below, at least on my screen, is really tiny and hard to read, but I like the idea!

It sounds like you are on the right track. I agree with keeping your name in. Your name is your brand. I use mine. I like the new look. Lori is such a wonderful giving person and she is doing things right so what she says is good advice. The spool rack looks like what I need for my wire.

Okay my dear. I guess I don't understand. You have a website, another blog and another shop besides etsy. I would be so confused as to what needs updating etc. with so many. Why don't you just drop this blog and put an annoucement on this one telling everyone you have moved to the new one and this one is closing in say June? You have the shop already so dump the etsy. If your current shop, website, blog doesn't let you do everything then switch. I use godaddy. I like it becasue I can change pretty much everything on it with not too much work. i.e. new header photo, change the colors, interactive calendar, photo album, add supply list attachments for my classes, etc. On godaddy people can leave comments with alot of ease. With godaddy i get the statistics of hits on the site, blog etc. and your domain is your domain to go where you want. mine www.shibui-daughters.com (shop.shibui-daughters.com, blog.shibui-daughters.com Thats my two bits

First - love that you put all your info at the bottom of your post - really helpful.

Just a thought - why don't you break up all the things you want to change into smaller pieces that you can tackle one at a time? Consolidating some of your sites is a great idea - you could start there. I think I'm aware of all of your "lines", but as a customer, it would be helpful to have one or two locations to shop.

While you're waiting for that aspect to "settle", you could be working on a new logo. I keep picturing an owl with some of the letters of your name as eyes or glasses.

And I don't know if this can be accomplished, because you might not be able to sync the timing - but what if you planned on having a piece of jewelry published right around the time you launch your new website? Then you could reference it in your bio info. You would get huge exposure that way.

I agree with the others who say your business name should be your name, LoreleiEurto. You already have great name recognition...use it. I second the comment about wordpress blogs. I tend not to follow people there. I like that blogger lets me "join this site" and connects me to them automatically and shows me their blogs in the order of newest to oldest postings on my sidebar. Many people connect to my site through others who are connected to me. I have to manually add the wordpress blogs and I'm rarely motivated to do so. I would keep an etsy site for the traffic, one other personal ecommerce site where most of the money could stay in your pocket, and still keep this blog for the ease of connecting all your places together and interacting with your customers. Etsy is still the best deal in town...A personal shop is never going to draw traffic like etsy does. More people discover etsy every day and they feel safe buying from it. The fees may bug you but they are not a bad deal at all. (I agree with another commenter that if the fees could be taken at the time of purchase, we'd barely notice them.) With your unique style and constant stream of one-of-a-kind items, your shop will always do well, regardless of how much competition is on etsy.

I love your new sign-off; the font for your name is great. I would just suggest that the other info is a bit too wordy (and I would know, I am always too wordy in writing things). It needs a box or highlighting or color or bullets... Keep the info easy to find, like on a business card.

I had a chat with Mary Harding about using a person's name for a jewelry business. Such an big decision in the beginning. What if I don't want to be connected to some clients from the daytime job...hmmmn, lots to think about.

Good luck with all of your decisions. You have worked to have branding for your name, that is the hard part. Pat yourself on the back for that. The rest is details on moving forward. Go for it.

Mark from Shopify here. I'm happy to hear that you are using our platform to sell some of your products (which look really unique and awesome btw). I know how challenging it can be to start a business and make it successful online with so many options and decisions to make. If you like Anthropology's website then you might want to check out these Shopify themes that have a somewhat simliar look and feel:http://themes.shopify.com/themes/new-standard/styles/slatehttp://themes.shopify.com/themes/minimal/styles/fashionhttp://themes.shopify.com/themes/responsive/styles/parishttp://themes.shopify.com/themes/editions/styles/light

If you have any questions feel free to hit me up on Twitter. Good luck with your biz!

Hi Lorelei, I just recently found your blog and I look forward to see all of the changes and where you decide to go with it. I feel like I did the opposite of what everyone has been talking about here; I didn't use my name for my shop/blog, and I am using Squarespace along with ETSY. Anyways, good luck with your new direction. :)